“I won’t love you unless…”
“I won’t give you that promotion unless…”
The manipulator is never the stranger down the street.
It’s your friend, your boss, your romantic partner, your employee, your customer.
“I can’t believe you won’t do this one thing for me…”
I have these holes and it’s hard for me to fill them:
- The “disease to please”
- Addiction to earning the approval of others
- A fear of expressing anger, frustration or disapproval
- Lack of assertiveness and ability to say no.
I even wrote a book, “The Power of No.” It was a WSJ bestseller just in case you missed it.
But I wrote it because I needed to learn how to say no.
You don’t buy a book about dating from Brad Pitt.
You buy it from someone like me. Someone who was in pain and had to learn.
Manipulation is when the other person will do anything, at any cost, to get you to do what they want.
They will guilt trip, they will lie, they will yell, they will evade.
They will be a victim. They will shame.
No successful person ever said in a TED talk, “Playing the victim is a great strategy for success. I rode victimhood all the way to the top!”
The manipulator will not be successful. But I am still easily manipulated.
You can’t ask “why?” They won’t answer.
I have never once gotten an honest answer to “why?”
***
“Well, what do YOU want?” a therapist once asked me when I was under the spell.
“I don’t know.”
Wanting something? That was a distant memory.
I had to get the tools. I had to understand them. I had to think about why I am so easily manipulated. So afraid to lose love.
So I bought a book about manipulation…
Anyway, that’s the intro to this week’s Altucher’s Book Club. Click below to watch:
James Altucher is the author of the bestselling book Choose Yourself, editor at The Altucher Report and host of the popular podcast, The James Altucher Show, which takes you beyond business and entrepreneurship by exploring what it means to be human and achieve well-being in a world that is increasingly complicated. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
Image courtesy of Rhett Wesley.
